Month: January 2014

I shrug and go back to work. He takes himself out for a few hours, trots down to the skate park, avoiding the helping hands of people who try to reach out and grab him, thinking that he’s a lost dog. He arrives at the asphalt and plays it cool, to begin with. Hovers around the sidelines, watching the others. When he feels comfortable, when he is ready to play it really cool and brave the track, he slides into place with all the other skaters, and practices his tricks, gets his balance right. Finesses his technique.

What do you do, when you are at a girl friend’s house, but they are a friend you don’t know *that* well, and one of their male friends (you’ve never met before) becomes anxious and agitated, and tensely yells, “Oh should I just calm down? Should I just calm down? Should I just calm down?” while racing back and forth through the kitchen, from the hallway door to the porch door, before stopping at the porch door and banging their head against the door, hard, several times? And everyone is making hushing noises, and someone offers them a chair and calmingly touches their shoulder, but the guy violently strikes their hand away… and five minutes pass, and people resume chatting, trying to get things back to normal, and the event is glossed over, like nothing happened?

When I was a kid, my parents had some friends who I really liked, and wanted to see more often.

Billy and Ted lived in England, then in France. They were fascinating to me. I liked their children, too, but I enjoyed being around those grownups. They had traits that my parents didn’t, and I wanted to learn more. I remember Ted telling me about skiing through the alps, and I wanted to know more. I remember Billy taking me to a department store (it felt very fancy, but it was probably the equivalent of Target!) and when she showed me her favourite makeup brand, and I admired it, she bought me a red lip gloss and I was ecstatic! It felt so grownup and expensive and special.

Adam Grant has a personal project called Eggs on Toast with Thyme, where he’s collecting very short stories about time travel. He began with 29 stories from Mechanical Turk, then moved onto stories by friends. My one is here.

Have you ever thought about what you find fun? I came across this question in The Artist’s Way, and seriously, I was stumped.

I know the excited, joyous feeling of fun, from my past. As a child, making places and objects out of Lego, and using Playmobil and Barbies and other toys to create stories, quests, dramas, romances. As a teenager, singing and acting at school. As a young adult, dancing all night. But after that?

Last year, there was a work project to do with bloggers, and I decided I needed to get familiar with blog directories, including Bloglovin’. For some time I browsed the site regularly, and found the categorisation slightly confusing, but I couldn’t articulate why.

Fox Woods (@msfoxwoods)
Hello. Yes, my name is Fox. I love making things (clubs, workshops, events, communities, stories, videos, music). I have two (2) small kids and I don't know what I wanna be when I grow up. ⇢ more